Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY

[Eldan]

Power levels:
I feel as if 4E was on to something with tiers. Really. While more specialized systems are perhaps basically better at any given level and game style than D&D, the unique selling point of D&D, I think, is that rush of levelling. Where you start out as the village nobody and end up a demigod, if you play long enough. So we play into that. Low levels are weak. There's barely any magic, you need trickery, guile, tactics and probably henchmen to take on anything more than a few goblins.
But from there on, you go on to be mighty heroes, a Conan or an Aragorn or a Robin Hood. At this level, mages are wise and learned, but their magic is not that powerful and it does not have the answers to everything and they probably rely on their knowledge of the weird and dangerous more than on their spells.
At higher levels, everyone has powers. That's it. There's no more "Guy who's just pretty good with a sword". That's just not a thign that works anymore. If you want to be close to normal, you can be a Gilgamesh or Cú Chulainn, but you will still be functionally invulnerable to normal weapons and wrestling dragons. More likely, your fighter will be Thor. Your wizard is now the classical D&D wizard.

Magic:
At low levels, there will be Unearthed Arcana styled Incantations like in the SRD, just many, many more of them, and they will be open to any class as rituals. For more specialized classes, there will be a few general magical powers, though very few, mainly things that concern interacting with magic via willpower, namely sensing magical effects and creatures, breaking curses and enchantments, warding off and banishing magical creatures, that kind of thing. In addition, there will be pact magic, based on Tome of Magic's binder, but refluffed with more categories of spirits other than just the really weird ones from outside reality: animal spirits, ancestral spirits, fiends, that kind of thing.

Vancian magic is a thing, because I love it, but it will be restricted to very high level wizards. It will be based on concentration and allow a wizard to memorize and release more narrow magical effects. It will mainly have the advantage of allowing a wizard to directly access magical energies like magical creatures do, without needing an outsider or spirit as an intermediary.

Combat:
ToB Maneuvers for everyone. They just work.

Also, I find healing just tedious, so let's switch to a vitality and wound points system, where in many fights, you'll get winded, but not badly wounded. This also has the advantage of allowing a bit more realism at lower levels, where your barbarian can't just say "Oh, it's just a longbow, I can take that". No, he evaded. It was close and thrilling. Throw in vitality points automatically refilling after a short rest, too.

Skills:
More of them. A lot more. Here's the thing. I know that combining skills like hide and move silently into stealth or listen and spot into perception is popular. But I like granular skills. Like, super-granular. If it was up to me, everyone would get something like 10 skill points per level and the skill list would be twice as long. I'd freely plunder from other games, too. You can tell me all you want that no one ever takes Gem Cutting or Astrology as a skill, I want that in there.

Feats:
Eliminate everything that's just +X to Y. Unless maybe, maaaaybe the bonus is super huge. Really, I'd like feats to hand out new abilities wherever possible.